Chen Jingwei, Vice Dean of School of Animation and Digital Arts, was deeply involved in the technical projects of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, dedicating her sweat and passion to this world-renowned event.
As the highlight of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, the opening and closing ceremonies are destined to attract the attention of the world. Thanks to the "High-tech Winter Olympics” Project, in which Chen Jingwei is involved, a "rehearsal system" has been built for the opening and closing ceremonies . It allows directorial team to plan the program without relying on the traditional script writing or drawing methods, therefore the planning efficiency is greatly improved.
"It is a very intuitive system.You can compare it to a scene in the video games," said Chen, using a figurative expression. This system uses a large number of game engines. By adjusting the parameters of the rehearsal system, the directorial team can directly show their creative effects to the personnel and calculate the actual materials needed, which significantly improves the working efficiency and saves a lot of time, manpower and resources.
It is worth mentioning that this rehearsal system is a general system, which can be used not only in the Beijing Winter Olympics, but also in various large-scale exhibitions and performances in the future. Furthormore,the system also fits the concept of 2022 Winter Olympics - green, inclusive, open and clean.
Simulation of multi-position camera lens effect in athletes’ entrance
Efficient Rendering
At the opening ceremony of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, a screen with an area of nearly 10,000 square meters and a resolution of up to 16K was used. In order to produce animation on a high-frame-rate 16K computer, a cluster of high-performance GPU and CPU servers must be used, and the rendering time for a three-minute material may reach couple of days. Aiming to improve the efficiency of the massive data calculation, the team developed its own rendering cluster management software, which enables automatic task assignment, automatic result notification and uploading, etc. The cluster rendering speed was increased by more than 30 times, providing emergency support for unexpected situations such as program modification.
Three-dimensional Simulation
The rehearsal system provides a platform to enter the virtual version of National Stadium during the preparation period of the opening and closing ceremonies. And its advanced simulation technology is also a key one in the hot concept- "Metaverse" .
Simulation interface of the opening ceremony of Beijing 2022
Multi-position camera lens simulation effect when displaying the Olympic rings
The Concept of Frugality
The directorial team has rehearsed on the system for about 12 times before the opening ceremony. The rehearsal system is accurate to every second of the opening ceremony, also, the scheduling and status of nearly 4,000 actors, 2,500 athletes as well as 30,000 live spectators is clearly visible.
Through the rehearsal system, the team can disassemble and refine the director's ideas into a training manual to guide training. Therefore, the efficiency of rehearsals was greatly improved without the need of actors’ repeated trials. It provides strong technological support for the planning, design, rehearsal and contingency handling of the opening and closing ceremonies. This technology fundamentally reflects the concept of frugality, reducing the cost of each part by 40% to 90%, while significantly improving efficiency.
The interface of the rehearsal system
Compared with other work related to the Beijing Winter Olympics such as volunteers, the work of the technical project relies more on preliminary preparation. Aside from completing the work of building models in the system, creating animations, etc., a lot of real-world debugging is also indispensable. Therefore, since the Spring Festival of 2021, Chen Jingwei has devoted herself to the project with the general manager of the project, Professor Ding Gangyi from Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), and other staff members.
Art and Science Integration
For simple, safe and wonderful purposes, Beijing Winter Olympics fully demonstrated the achievements of the rapid technological development in recent years, implemented the concept of combining art and technology, and presented the "unique romance of Chinese people" to the world.
"Some of director Zhang Yimou's ideas are very artistic, and he is inclined to apply new technology and ways to express traditional arts." Ms. Chen Jingwei believes that although arts and science have different origins, they need to integrate and complement each other in order to achieve goals such as serving life and innovating works.
Simulation of National Stadium
The Beijing Winter Olympics project also provides a higher starting point and a broader stage for the development of arts and technology integration.
Chen Jingwei said, "Being able to participate in such a large-scale project is a rare opportunity for us teachers and students. As a teacher in the new era, we not only have the responsibility of teaching, but also have to think about how to make contributions to our country with professional knowledge."
Finally, Chen Jingwei expressed her gratitude to the teachers and students from BIT and CUC who cooperated in this project.
Editor: Zheng Shuyu
Advisor:Zhang Xu
